Ricky Pine's Blog, page 31

Review: The Daughters of Izdihar

The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Shannon Chakraborty and Piéra Forde’s glowing recs, I ordered this book at the library and was very glad it came in so quickly. Hadeer Elsbai crafts a world heavily inspired by Egypt, in a city near the delta of a river very like the Nile, near a White Middle Sea and a Vermillion Sea with clear counterparts. Where it diverges is the presence of an autocratic theocratic kingdom to the west, where Alg...

Review: Hidden Pictures

Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wonder if this is what M. Night haters must feel like, thinking that every single twist ending of his is an utterly stupid one that wrecks the entire movie. This is my first Jason Rekulak novel, but I’m thinking this might be my last. Don’t get me wrong, it starts out pretty strongly, with a classic and cinematic setup of a babysitter horror story (slightly aged up), and I could’ve seen it giving a lot of vibes like...

Review: Tread of Angels

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While we wait for further adventures in Roanhorse's established series (though The Sixth World is apparently on indefinite hiatus, and the final book of Between Earth and Sky has a title and release date for later this year, but no cover), she gives us an interesting little novella with a peculiar steampunk western fantasy vibe. This mountainous mining town with a sharp class divide, rooted in past angel-demon war...

Review: Light from Uncommon Stars

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First off, I have to be honest: I ordered this book, and got it from the library, weeks before the shooting at the Lunar New Year festivities in Monterey Park, CA, where this book largely takes place. Reading it only after the shooting was quite surreal, as was the fact that after I finished the book, I went and watched the movie Tár and saw a lot of strong parallels between the Queen of Hell and Lydia Tár herse...

Review: Light from Uncommon Stars

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First off, I have to be honest: I ordered this book, and got it from the library, weeks before the shooting at the Lunar New Year festivities in Monterey Park, CA, where this book largely takes place. Reading it only after the shooting was quite surreal, as was the fact that after I finished the book, I went and watched the movie Tár and saw a lot of strong parallels between the Queen of Hell and Lydia Tár herse...

Review: Fortuna

Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Five star reads have become pretty rare for me in recent years. But this book, which I vaguely remember having a place on the shelf at Stanford Bookstore when it first came out…how the hell didn’t I read it sooner? At least now I know I have sequels to pick up soon, continuing the story of these two trouble twins, Scorpia and Corvus. Thanks to Merbeth’s editor for convincing her to add Corvus’s POV, because she does a damn ...

Review: Gleanings: Stories from the Arc of a Scythe

Gleanings: Stories from the Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By now it's been about three years since Shusterman concluded the original trilogy of Arc of a Scythe, but he clearly had some more stories to tell, and he did so with a little help from his friends and family. This far future world, being so far out from our own, had a lot of hidden potential as the original trilogy barely scratched the surface. Highlights for me include the secret origi...

Review: The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy

The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, the only reason it took me this long to read this book (aside from the fact that audiobooks came out months before ebook or physical versions) is because while I did order a signed copy from Chakraborty’s hometown indie, Thunder Road Books in New Jersey, my apartment complex is absolute garbage at taking deliveries at, y’know, my actual building. And no one told me there w...

Review: Tress of the Emerald Sea

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You can imagine my excitement last spring when Brandon Sanderson made the surprise announcement of no less than four new novels, with special quarterly releases as part of the Kickstarter-funded Year of Sanderson in 2023. You can imagine that I contributed to the tune of...well, it escapes me how many dollars exactly, but I contributed enough to get the physical copies of each of the four books in their s...

Review: The World We Make

The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even YA isn't immune to the ongoing strange trend of duologies being all the rage, as N.K. Jemisin indicates with her latest novel, her first in almost three full years. This series was initially announced as a trilogy, but it became clear this year that Jemisin was going to end it with the second book, which makes a lot of sense once you've read the acknowledgments at the end of the book. Jemisin was understandably ...